Morahan, Christopher

The Jewel in the Crown

The Jewel in the Crown, adapted from Paul Scott's Raj Quartet novels, tells the story of the final years before India gained independence in 1947. It is rare for a filmed adaptation to successfully preserve the richness and complexity of a great novel, but this epic miniseries succeeds both as personal drama and historical panorama.

In 1942 Daphne Manners, a naive young woman newly arrived in the town of Mayapore, befriends Hari Kumar, an Indian-born journalist who has spent most of his life in England. With his dark skin and educated English accent, Hari feels like an outsider wherever he goes, but Daphne understands his plight and they become romantically involved. Their developing relationship is jealously observed by local police chief Ronald Merrick, a man haunted by his own demons. When the lovers are attacked in the gardens of the ruined Bibighar palace and Daphne is raped, Merrick seizes his opportunity, pins the crime on Hari, and has the young man jailed. Distraught, Daphne flees to her aunt's home in Kashmir, where she dies giving birth to a half-caste child. The focus then shifts to Sarah Layton, a young Englishwoman who becomes fascinated by the story of Daphne and Hari, and who will have her own encounter with Ronald Merrick.

The events in the Bibighar gardens become a symbol of the violent struggle for Indian independence, and other symbols--Daphne's bicycle, a length of butterfly lace, a picture of Queen Victoria on an Indian throne--appear and reappear, linking people and events. This helps to give coherence to the plot even as it spans five years and expands to include many characters whose lives intersect in complex and unexpected ways.

With a huge cast and breathtaking location photography, The Jewel in the Crown was an enormous undertaking when it was made in the early 1980s. Twenty years later it has lost none of its power, and it remains one of the best films ever made for television. --Simon Leake

A Dance to the Music of Time

There'll always be an England--and Anglophiles shall be forever grateful. A Dance to the Music of Time is a sumptuous, leisurely portrait of a time in Britain's history (from the 1920s to the '60s) that epitomizes the pinnacle of romance. At the center of this Dance is Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator of the tales of intrigue, infidelity, queer friendships, and ruthless ambition that intersect throughout the series. Jenkins is played by the appealing James Purefoy, who, with starring turns in the likes of the film Vanity Fair and the HBO series Rome, clearly has not met a period drama he could not master. Flawed but clear-eyed, Jenkins observes the machinations of the upper crust from a bit of a remove, as if watching a play unfold.

And unfold it does. The plot is far too intricate to encapsulate, and in the end, plot isn't the appeal of British drawing-room dramas, anyway. Instead, it's the evocation of a time bound by intricate, unspoken rules--which participants seem to spend as much time and furtive energy trying to break as they do abiding by them. Notable characters include the greasy Widmerpool (played by the BAFTA-winning Simon Russell Beale), who, despite being utterly unremarkable, manages to build quite a career in the British government and military. John Gielgud is riveting as the novelist St. John Clarke, whose books are wildly popular but sniffed at by serious critics, and Miranda Richardson is the devilish Pamela Flitton.

The miniseries bears more than a passing resemblance to the much-beloved Brideshead Revisited, and in fact the cast of characters is so complex that the boxed set includes a "cheat sheet" guide to the most prominent 15 of them. But keeping tabs is less important than simply being swept into the lush period of time and allowing its gorgeous details wash over the viewer. For Anglophiles, the experience of watching A Dance to the Music of Time is truly transcendent. --A.T. Hurley

Clockwise

Monty Python's John Cleese makes this lighthearted farce work as a tightly wound, punctilious public school headmaster whose well-organized life unravels in a series of disasters on his journey to a conference. Cleese is a master of fussy, fastidious characters in exasperating situations, bottling up his frustration under good manners and sardonic comments until he finally blows, but he's also startlingly vulnerable as he systematically loses all sense of himself. Dressed in monk's robes and stranded on a lonely country road, he looks down at his naked wrist and sighs, "I've even lost the time." Michael Fryan (the playwright of Noises Off) doesn't really have much of a story behind the situations, but he provides plenty of complications, and Cleese holds the film together with his brittle manner, single-minded drive, and hilarious headmaster's condescending haughtiness. While it will seem slight to many, Cleese fans will love it. --Sean Axmaker

The Judi Dench Collection

Dame Judi Dench is one of the most celebrated stars of stage and screen. She is the winner of an Academy Award(R) two Golden Globes an unprecedented seven Olivier Awards and numerous BAFTAs. At the BBC she has appeared in a dazzling range of material from sitcoms to Shakespeare. This collection contains ten star-studded BBC productions spanning four decades and ranging from the Feydeau farce Keep an Eye on Amelie to Ibsen's Ghosts with Kenneth Branagh Michael Gambon and Natasha Richardson an Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with John Gielgud Peggy Ashcroft and Ian Holm. And tucked away among the bonus features is a 1996 interview in which she sings "Send in the Clowns" from her Olivier-winning performance of A Little Night Music just o of the many gems in this glorious testament to one of the greatest performers of our time.System Requirements:Run Time: 1260 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 794051286628 Manufacturer No: E2866

To call The Judi Dench Collection a treasure trove is indubitably cliché, but that's so much classier than "Dench-a-Palooza." Essential for fans of the great Dame, theatre buffs, and drama students, this eight-disc set is an embarrassment of riches, with nine BBC productions of classic and original plays, plus three radio plays and excerpts from televised interviews, one of which features her moving rendition of "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music, for which she won an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical (is there nothing she can't do?). They etch an indelible portrait of an artist with a compelling presence and staggering range. Judi Dench is one of those actors who rarely seem to make a false move, handling wrenching drama, madcap farce, and witty comedy with equal aplomb. John Hopkins' Talking to a Stranger (1966) is a British television benchmark that is mentioned in the same breath as Dennis Potter's masterpieces. Dench won her first BAFTA (the British equivalent of the Oscar) for her role as a damaged sibling in a dysfunctional family. Dench stars as Anya in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, a 1962 production translated by, and starring, John Gielgud and, as Madame Ranesvky, Peggy Ashcroft. Ashcroft is a hard act to follow, but Dench pulls it off in a 1981 production in which she assumes the role of the irresponsible aristocrat.

Georges Feydeau's Keep an Eye on Amelie (1973) is a carefree hour in which Dench stars as a coquette who agrees to marry a confirmed bachelor (Patrick Cargill) so he can inherit a million francs. This production is paired on disc 4 with writer Michael Frayn's (Noises Off!) award-winning comedy Make and Break, which unfolds at a trade fair in Frankfort and stars Dench as a devoted secretary to a work-consumed boss. Two powerful dramas comprise disc 8, Going Gently, for which Dench earned another BAFTA as a hospice nurse to two adversarial patients, and Can You Hear Me Thinking?(1990), starring Dench and her late husband Michael Williams (A Fine Romance) as parents whose lives are shattered when their teenage son develops schizophrenia. Ibsen's still potent Ghosts (1981) boasts a stellar ensemble, including Kenneth Branagh as doomed son Oswald and Michael Gambon as Pastor Manders, with Dench as Mrs. Alving, whose respected late husband led a dark, secret life. Anything but, Absolute Hell (1991) is a lost-souls black comedy starring Dench as Christine, the proprietor of a bohemian nightclub in post-World War II London. The cast includes her future Notes on a Scandal costar, Bill Nighy, as a washed-up writer. Stardom in the States came late to Dench. This collection allows her audience to catch-up with these mostly towering performances that established her as one of the premier actors of our time. --Donald Liebenson

Bloody Good British Comedies (Clockwise / Are You Being Served? The Movie / The Best of Benny Hill)

Clockwise
Monty Python's John Cleese makes this lighthearted farce work as a tightly wound, punctilious public school headmaster whose well-organized life unravels in a series of disasters on his journey to a conference. Cleese is a master of fussy, fastidious characters in exasperating situations, bottling up his frustration under good manners and sardonic comments until he finally blows, but he's also startlingly vulnerable as he systematically loses all sense of himself. Dressed in monk's robes and stranded on a lonely country road, he looks down at his naked wrist and sighs, "I've even lost the time." Michael Fryan (the playwright of Noises Off) doesn't really have much of a story behind the situations, but he provides plenty of complications, and Cleese holds the film together with his brittle manner, single-minded drive, and hilarious headmaster's condescending haughtiness. While it will seem slight to many, Cleese fans will love it. --Sean Axmaker

Are You Being Served? The Movie
Writers Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft managed something quite clever with this, the film version of the 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served? The idea of this cheery collection of comedy stereotypes--the pompous one, the vulgar one, the camp one, the shifty one, and so on--being confined within a department store was a master stroke, as it allowed any kind of situation to arise without the plot having to exceed the restrictions imposed by the set. How, then, to keep the same theme for the big screen without just offering the television series writ large? Simple: send the whole cast on holiday together but make sure they can't leave their hotel, a state of affairs contrived easily enough by throwing a guerilla uprising into the plot. So it is, then, that the staff of Grace Bros. descends on the Costa Plonka while the store is closed for refurbishment. There are all the usual jokes involving knickers, boobs, toilets, and gay sex (sometimes all at once), adding up to a good slice of nostalgic fun for anyone who was there when lapels really were that wide. Incidentally, this item is worth having just for the wonderful Frank Langford caricatures on the cover. --Roger Thomas

The Best of Benny Hill
Benny Hill was always best at quasi-silent slapstick, so it's no surprise that some of the best stuff on The Best of Benny Hill seems to owe more to the work of Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle than to mainstream TV comedy. It may also be no coincidence that, unusually, this release began life in the cinema. There's some classic material on offer here: the extended opening item, "Lower Tidmarsh Hospital," for example, almost transcends buffoonery to become social comment, but best of all is the sketch which features Hill as a chat-show host (people really used to wear matching shirts and ties) attempting to deal with a West End star and starlet, the former monosyllabic, the latter catastrophically plastered. Among the other items featured, the knowing send-up of the pretentiousness of avant-garde French cinema is also very funny, while the short linking items include a wicked parody of Alan Whicker and a sideswipe at barely literate actresses ("What's that in the road? A head?"). Fans will be pleased to know that Hill's regular supporting cast, including Patricia Hayes, Nicholas Parsons and Rita Webb, are all present. --Roger Thomas

Element of Doubt

Troubles

This fascinating adaptation of J.G. Farrell's novel is both a compelling drama and an illuminating examination of Ireland's troubled history. When Major Brendan Archer returns from the trenches of World War I to his fiancée in Ireland, he quickly becomes involved in familial and political turmoil.

The shell-shocked major (played with wounded vulnerability by Ian Charleson) is engaged to Angela Spencer, who lives with her family in the decaying Majestic Hotel. Angela's eccentric father wants to return the hotel to its former glory because he believes that this will somehow subdue the nationalist movement that threatens his privileged position. Meanwhile, changed utterly by his wartime experiences, Major Archer begins to fall for his fiancée's friend Sarah, a passionate nationalist.

The Majestic Hotel and its inhabitants are perfect symbols of crumbling English power, and the central love story brings a personal dimension to the political struggle. Troubles does a wonderful job of retaining the complexity of Farrell's novel, subtly shifting from comedy to tragedy, and the result is a deeply satisfying film. --Simon Leake

A Dance to the Music of Time [Region 2]

There'll always be an England--and Anglophiles shall be forever grateful. A Dance to the Music of Time is a sumptuous, leisurely portrait of a time in Britain's history (from the 1920s to the '60s) that epitomizes the pinnacle of romance. At the center of this Dance is Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator of the tales of intrigue, infidelity, queer friendships, and ruthless ambition that intersect throughout the series. Jenkins is played by the appealing James Purefoy, who, with starring turns in the likes of the film Vanity Fair and the HBO series Rome, clearly has not met a period drama he could not master. Flawed but clear-eyed, Jenkins observes the machinations of the upper crust from a bit of a remove, as if watching a play unfold.

And unfold it does. The plot is far too intricate to encapsulate, and in the end, plot isn't the appeal of British drawing-room dramas, anyway. Instead, it's the evocation of a time bound by intricate, unspoken rules--which participants seem to spend as much time and furtive energy trying to break as they do abiding by them. Notable characters include the greasy Widmerpool (played by the BAFTA-winning Simon Russell Beale), who, despite being utterly unremarkable, manages to build quite a career in the British government and military. John Gielgud is riveting as the novelist St. John Clarke, whose books are wildly popular but sniffed at by serious critics, and Miranda Richardson is the devilish Pamela Flitton.

The miniseries bears more than a passing resemblance to the much-beloved Brideshead Revisited, and in fact the cast of characters is so complex that the boxed set includes a "cheat sheet" guide to the most prominent 15 of them. But keeping tabs is less important than simply being swept into the lush period of time and allowing its gorgeous details wash over the viewer. For Anglophiles, the experience of watching A Dance to the Music of Time is truly transcendent. --A.T. Hurley

Clockwise [Region 2]

Monty Python's John Cleese makes this lighthearted farce work as a tightly wound, punctilious public school headmaster whose well-organized life unravels in a series of disasters on his journey to a conference. Cleese is a master of fussy, fastidious characters in exasperating situations, bottling up his frustration under good manners and sardonic comments until he finally blows, but he's also startlingly vulnerable as he systematically loses all sense of himself. Dressed in monk's robes and stranded on a lonely country road, he looks down at his naked wrist and sighs, "I've even lost the time." Michael Fryan (the playwright of Noises Off) doesn't really have much of a story behind the situations, but he provides plenty of complications, and Cleese holds the film together with his brittle manner, single-minded drive, and hilarious headmaster's condescending haughtiness. While it will seem slight to many, Cleese fans will love it. --Sean Axmaker

Element of Doubt [Region 2]